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Had a few buddies in town this past weekend and the weather was outstanding as was the fishing.
Friday in the pea soup fog we started at Kirby and spent an hour with no luck, moved over to Cree where we were only getting rockfish and then moved offshore to Turtlehead and finally the Wreck. TH was slow, but we picked up a small spring. The Wreck was better, three more spring but got our limit on hatch-Coho. The fog burned off around 11 and the winds stayed relatively light although earlier in the week were forecast for 35kts.
Saturday, the sun was out, the winds were calm so we headed straight out to the Rat's Nose. Lots of boats out there with everyone hooking up. It didn't take us more than 1 minute to be into our first fish -- hatchery coho took the spoon from the surface before the rod was even down. Multiple double headers and triple headers. We limited on both springs and coho in 2 hours. Water was so clear you could see the fish swimming under the boat 20-30 ft down. We were getting springs deep deep deep to get past to Coho -- 150+ft landed us a pair of 20lb springs. Everything was working! Spoons, plugs, hoochies didn't really seem to matter what colour -- flashers were totally optional. We dragged a Bucktail behind a 8/9wt fly rod had hits on that. Decided to drift for a while to go after some Halibut and did some jigging and the coho's were absolutely slamming the jig -- that was very cool. Overall, we caught well over 50 fish in a span of about 4 hours. Between 9-11am things were so frantic I couldn't stop to take a leak!!!
Sunday we decided to stay closer to home -- initially tried off Cree with one 10lb spring before we got blown off the water. Toured my buddies through the Broken Group and worked King George down the NE sides of the Deer Group. Couple of hits, but nothing major to show. Ran into the Tuna boat in Bamfield that night and picked up 3 x 30lb Albacore (boat is called the Star). He bleeds and individually hangs each Tuna by the tail in his blast freezer which holds them at -40C -- Sushi grade Tuna --looking forward to some good feeds on that.
Monday was go-home day so we fished for 2 hours at the Wall before the massive swamp out of the boat. Picked up our largest fish of the weekend within the first 5 minutes -- a 22lb spring (caught by me) on a green hoochie in 60ft of water. Great way to end the weekend.
Tried out an insulated fish bag this weekend rather than a bulky cooler. I have to say, they work very very well. Hangs off the back of the transom and it holds a ton of fish. We used a single bag of salt ice plus a few milk jug blocks I freeze over-night. The ice was well frozen at the end of each day. I like the bag as it saves a bunch of space on the dance floor. Heavy duty zippers and it's easy to drop in the fish. Got it at Westmarine -- it's made by C.E. Smith Company although there are many others. Don't see many using them up here, but the US guys seem keen on them. Pic of our Saturday catch -- we could have easily doubled the content of the bag as it had lots more room.
Originally Posted by The Fog Ducker
